One thing everyone on this site can agree with is that, whichever side of the Obama divide you fall on, politics does not work the way most progressives thought it would. Obama supporters, like the one offering condolences on the rec list recently, expected the President's coalition to stick together longer. Obama critics thought the President's change would, as Tavis Smiley says, be more than small change. How can a bill that Al Franken calls a historic step forward be the same bill that Markos is on Meet the Press (BTW this is must see TV - click on the links off the home page) decrying as expanding the status quo?
Today, while puzzling this mystery, I came to the realization that I've been completely wrong about politics. I think many others on Daily Kos made the same mistake. It's time we admitted the shallowness of our thinking and tried to pick up the pieces with less acrimony.
See I thought political involvement meant picking a few of the key issues America is pursuing the wrong path on and supporting candidates that wanted to change these failed policies. For blogging on Daily Kos this meant arguing against neoliberalism, for oil independence and occasionally pointing out that there are limits to growing America's population.
Now you might be waiting for me to admit that Obama detractors in 2006
IN LATIN America, they've got a name for the kind of politics that Sen. Barack Obama represents: neoliberalism with a human face. It's an attempt to revive an unpopular free-market, pro-business agenda behind the leadership of someone whose personal history suggests an affinity with the exploited and oppressed.
were right and I was wrong. That would be the wrong lesson to learn from these events as I now believe progressives are as much or more to blame than Obama. And its definitely not because, I / we, voted for Obama over Clinton or McCain. I and many other progressives (maybe including the President) made what I will call the Star Trek mistake.
You beam down to a planet and see that the residents have a machine dictator or that they have a disease or they have been taken over by a happy plant and you have some quick cure that turns everything around. So many of the diaries I and others post are beam down logs - hey you are using more oil than is available to you why don't you stop? Hey your health care is barbaric why don't you change it? Hey your importing cheap goods is putting people out of work why don't you stop? Hey your carbon emissions are over heating the planet; stop emitting CO2. Hey your wars are costly and accomplish little - try peace. Hey your capitalism is out of control why don't you regulate it more?
All of these "issues" are distractors just like the social ones that we always accuse Republicans of focusing on instead of their interests. In our current environment, what happened on HCR would happen on any of these other policies as well. We would stop the trade deficit but in exchange for losing the power to unionize. Or we would agree to reducing carbon emissions but it would be triggered on other countries doing the same. Infinite variety of this kind of outcome is likely and none of it would move us forward.
Not that progressives would be able to all agree on what to do even if a beam down solution could work. I would put global warming way down the list. Others think fixing the global trading system is unlikely. Some think that we owe it to the Afghans to stay. But progressives can all agree that our government is making a lot of fairly obvious mistakes and that progress on correcting them is dubious. Franken likes the health care reform but he's not happy with Lieberman's contribution.
The Star Trek mistake get its seductive power by ignoring wealth inequality. All of these other issues are continuing to grow in danger of toppling our society just as any basic thesis on increasing inequality predicts would happen and Tocqueville noted
Among the new objects that attracted my attention during my stay in the United States, none struck me with greater force than the equality of conditions. I easily perceived the enormous influence that this primary fact exercises on the workings of society. It gives a particular direction to the public mind, a particular turn to the laws, new maxims to those who govern, and particular habits to the governed... It creates opinions, gives rise to sentiments, inspires customs, and modifies everything it does not produce...
Not only is our current taxation / regulation / campaign contribution system inadequate but we have developed an entire false economics based on ignoring true social relationships
Now we can appreciate that anonymous market relationships are only part of the economic reality; perhaps not even the largest part. Most economic problems and possibilities involve instead relationships between and among individual agents, whether taxes, contracts and bargains, fights and thefts, learning and search. It is a world still only imperfectly explored.
So long as we allow some people to profit from the continuation of American obviously wrong policy, the failure will continue. Any scheme that revolves around first making progress on some problem other than wealth inequality and the usage of wealth to distort our politics will fail. In yoga class we are told on some moves, "The posture has not even started until you lock your knee." You can stand there sweating and straining but you will not get any benefit until the exercise is started correctly. This is the impasse that has pitted so many progressives against each other - we are making progress / no we're not.
All of the bickering progressives are doing debating these other issues and whether there is progress or not distracts us from the real task at hand. The system was broken down by rich people / lobbyists that coolly use money and power to appropriate our government. Progressives can only fight back by using all of our power to vote, donate and organize to prevent masses of wealth from accumulating and being used against us. We can no longer afford to rally around politicians or other issues - no matter how appealing they seem. Our ignorance of this basic political / economic reality has caused enough harm already.